And so the story of this baleful influence over a weak, half-drugged girl, her mistress, became known to Plume and gradually to others. It was easy for Elise to make her believe that, in spite of the word of a gentleman, her impulsive love letters were still held by Blakely because he had never forgiven her. It was Elise, indeed, who had roused her jealousy and had done her best to break that engagement with Blakely and to lead to the match with the handsome and devoted major. Intrigue and lying were as the breath of the woman's nostrils. She lived in them. But Sandy was never to see her again. "Woman-Walk-in-the-Night" was "Woman-Walk-no-More."
And now the friendless creature stood charged with more crimes than would fill the meager space of a Territorial jail, and yet the one originally laid at her door, though never publicly announced, was now omitted entirely—that of assault with deadly weapon, possibly with intent to kill. Even Mother Shaughnessy and Norah were silenced, and Pat Mullins put to confusion. Even the latest punctured patient at the hospital, Private Todd, had to serve as evidence in behalf of Elise, for Graham, post surgeon, had calmly declared that the same weapon that so nearly killed Pat Mullins had as nearly and neatly done the deed for Todd—the keen Apache knife of Princess Natzie.
"The heathen child was making her usual night visit to her white lover," said Wren grimly, having in mind the womanly shape he had seen that starlit morning at Blakely's rear door.
"You're right in one guess, R-robert Wren," was the prompt answer of his friend and fellow Scot, who glared at Janet rather than his convalescent as he spoke. "And ye're wrang in twanty. She was tryin', and didn't know the way. She was tryin', for she had his watch and pocketbook. You're wrang if ye think she was ever there before or after. The slut you saw cryin' at his back door was that quean Elise, an' ye well know there was no love lost between them. Go say yer prayers, man, for every wicked thought ye've had of him—or of that poor child. Between them they saved your Angela!"
CHAPTER XXVII
THE PARTING BY THE WATERS
ome day I may tell Miss Angela—but never you," had Mr. Blakely said, before setting forth on his perilous essay to find Angela's father, and with native tenacity Miss Wren the elder had remembered the words and nourished her wrath. It was strange, indeed, that Plume, an officer and a gentleman, should have bethought him of the "austere vestal" as a companion witness to Blakely's supposed iniquity; but, between these two natures,—one strong, one weak,—there had sprung up the strange sympathy that is born of a common, deep-rooted, yet ill-defined antipathy—one for which neither she nor he could yet give good reason, and of which each was secretly ashamed. Each, for reasons of her or his own, cordially disliked the Bugologist, and each could not but welcome evidence to warrant such dislike. It is human nature. Janet Wren had strong convictions that the man was immoral, if for no other reason than that he obviously sought Angela and as obviously avoided her. Janet had believed him capable of carrying on a liaison with the dame who had jilted him, and had had to see that theory crushed. Then she would have it that, if not the mistress, he dallied with the maid, and when it began to transpire that virulent hatred was the only passion felt for him by that baffling and detestable daughter of Belial, there came actual joy to the soul of the Scotchwoman that, after all, her intuition had not been at fault. He was immoral as she would have him, even more so, for he had taken base advantage of the young and presumably innocent. She craved some proof, and Plume knew it, and, seeing her there alone in her dejection, had bidden her come and look—with the result described.